


Happiness is a Warm Gun

by merisunshine36



Category: Bourne Legacy (2012)
Genre: Breathplay, Dubious Consent, F/M, Frottage, Gunplay, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-31
Updated: 2012-08-31
Packaged: 2017-11-13 05:41:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/500118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merisunshine36/pseuds/merisunshine36
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the middle of hiding out with no good food to eat and nothing much to do, Aaron finds out that Marta likes guns a lot more than either of them ever realized.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Happiness is a Warm Gun

**Author's Note:**

> Please read the tags for warnings!

Aaron eats his dinner with one hand on his spoon and the other resting next to a gun that sits within easy reach. It's a tiny, snub-nosed pistol that fits right in the palm of his hand, one of many that are hidden all over their current crash pad. Calling it an apartment would be too generous. It's a rabbit hole tucked into the corner of a busy city in the middle of somewhere muggy and tropical. It looks exactly the same and entirely different than the last three places they stayed in. Marta has newfound sympathy for every musician who ever stood on a concert stage and expressed their love for all the fans in San Antonio, only to remember that San Antonio was three days ago, and now they're in Santa Fe. The appeal of being lost is not as enticing anymore. Because in order to stay alive, they can never be found again.

"Can you not bring that to the table?" Marta asks, dragging her spoon through the last of her dinner of beans and rice, which has made up all of their meals for the past four days now. They're hoarding their cash, since forty thousand dollars is not all that much when you're hopping countries every month and trying to stay off the grid. Aaron is still waiting on a contact of his to come through with some work. He inhales everything like he's being fed steak and lobster; by his standards anything that didn't originate from an MRE packet or an institutional kitchen is delicious. Marta would beg to differ, but the only recipes she knows are the kind that you cook up in a test tube.

"Why? You don't have faith in me and my friend here?" Aaron looks at the gun but doesn't touch it. He never forgets where each one is; every day he spends hours cleaning them obsessively, taking them apart and putting them back together faster than Marta can follow. "I mean, we did save you from a covert government organization that sent five assassins to your house just to dispose of you." They've been together long enough that they joke about it, sometimes. It's one of the few things that takes the edge off the occasional screaming nightmare.

"Of course I do," Marta says, defensive. Aaron doesn't trust her all the way yet, not always. He still can't quite parse the Marta who never knew his name with the Marta who stuck by his side in Manila with the Marta sitting in front of him now, sweaty, tired and bored. She slides her hand across the table and picks up the little pistol, just to drive home the point that she's not afraid of it. Aaron's fingers twitch a little, then close into a loose fist. Her heart rate picks up--it would be so easy for him to break her. "This just doesn't go well with the fantasy I'm trying to keep up where we're safe."

"You mean the one where we live in a nice suburb with my truck in the driveway and a huge-ass HDTV in the living room?" His eyes crinkle at the corners a little. "I love that one."

The lights flicker and go out as the overtaxed power grid gives out for the third time this week. There's nothing much they can do about it but get out the candles and wait for it to pass, but neither of them makes a move.The last light of the evening casts a faint red haze over everything, painting odd shadows on the walls.

Aaron takes a careful breath and leans back in the creaking old chair that barely holds his weight. It will take a few moments for him to realize a sniper bullet isn't coming through the window and for each of his hair-trigger reflexes to disengage. "That'll keep you safe," he says, pointing at the pistol. "You should hold on to it."

She already has a gun, one he picked up for her in a back alley shop in Malaysia. There's also the bowie knife that stays in her go-bag most of the time and a much smaller one that she keeps tucked in her boot whenever she goes out. Her own little arsenal. She kept him alive, and now he's doing the same for her.

"Okay," Marta says. She flips the pistol into her other hand, the weight of it solid and reassuring. "I will."

 

%%%

 

Marta sits on the bed in what used to be her good bra and underwear; it's too hot for anything more. She wore it the day of her fake psych eval to try and make herself feel better. Now it's the only thing she owns that didn't come from the big box store they'd stopped at before hopping the plane to Manila. She carefully empties the pistol clip, lines each of the bullets up on the bed in front of her while Aaron watches. He stopped pretending to read ten minutes ago and just plays with the penlight he uses at night, passing it back and forth across the scarred knuckles of his right hand. 

He hits her on the elbow with his book to get her attention. "I'll take it back if you want.".

"I could kill seven people with this," she muses. "Right now, I could go out into the street and--," she raises the empty gun, lines up the sights with the little vase of bright red flowers she bought the other day. " _Bang_."

The recoil rattles up her arm and down into her bones. She notices absently that it's cooler now, like the seasons spontaneously rolled over while she wasn't paying attention. Her current position isn't that comfortable, what with the hard floorboards beneath he,r but she doesn't dare move. Everything is silent down on the first floor, but she knows there's no way they'd just give up like that, not when they were going to kill her ten minutes ago. A faint creak from down the hall puts her back on high alert. The chamber of the gun she's holding is probably empty, but there might be one round left. All she needs is one...just one.

"Hey, Doc? Dr. Shearing? _Marta_."

Marta blinks again, and the sharp smell of fall is gone, replaced by humid air and the high whine of motorbikes chasing one another down the alley behind their building. Aaron sits up on one elbow, as close as he can get without touching her. There's a thin sheen of sweat above his lip that she reaches out and wipes away.

"Jesus, it's hot. Do you want some water? I'm gonna get some--," she makes a move to get off the bed and sends the bullets clattering down to the floor. Aaron holds her back with one hand around her wrist. She doesn't want to talk about this now, or ever, but he's not letting her up.

"I think I lost you for a moment there," he says, eyes narrowed. With his free hand, he reaches out for the barrel of the gun and pulls it down and away from where she still has it pointed at his face. "You okay?"

Marta bites back a laugh. _Okay_ is now a cold pile of ashes on a back road in Maryland. Aaron pushes himself into an upright position and pulls her in close so that she's sitting half on his lap. He smells like three days worth of sweat, but she just sits there and doesn't move until reality seems a bit more stable. 

"The thing that scared me the most about you at first was how nice you could be," she says. Wiith that, everything else she's been thinking for the past four months just spills out. "I watched you just break some guy's neck and then offer me forty thousand dollars to get out of the country. You didn't even know me then. And that kindness, was that Aaron Cross or was it Kenneth Kitsom? Hell, maybe it came from the virus, I don't know, we didn't test for empathic responses, not until Larx-3 got underway." Marta balls her hands into fists to keep them from shaking. "Did you always do what they told you to do? Shoot this guy, torture that one, two hundred fifty milligrams blue and green chems each day? Did you ever wonder what would happen if you just said 'no'? Did you even _care_?"

Aaron stiffens, and she waits for him to push her away. It's a surprise when he doesn't. All he does is brush a sweaty lock of hair behind her ear and ask, "did you?"

 _What do you think we do out there?_ he asked her, once. She knows now, and she's not sure that she's better for it.

Marta still has her hand on the gun where it's tucked between them, warm now from the heat coming off his skin. "No," she says, and feels less ashamed than she knows she should. "I _thought_ I wanted the same things they did."

"They told me I was serving my country. What did they tell you?"

Times like this Marta just wants to pack up and go. Take her chances out on the open road. She tightens her grip on the gun again, tries to imagine keeping it on her all the time. It's not that bad, really.

"Marta Shearing, I don't think you're afraid of guns at all." He says it quietly, like it's a secret.

"I never said I was." It's nice to say it out loud because it's true, is and has been since she first bought that revolver to take some of the edge off of being alone in that big old house. She'd kept it on her bedside table, loaded, and as long as it was there she'd sleep like a baby. The scary part was actually having to use it.

"You had orders, Doc." Aaron kisses her collarbone, the hollow between her breasts. She knows that he's just trying to make her feel better. He really shouldn't. "We both did."

She shifts her weight the rest of the way into his lap, where she's surprised to find that he's already half-hard beneath her, ready to go after nothing but the sight of her in a bra that's gone grey from too many washings. After an eight-month dry spell and two weeks thinking she was going to die, sex is the easy part. He slides a finger beneath the thin fabric at the crease of her thigh. Just a few glancing touches, gone before she can register them, and she's already pushing her hips forward, hungry for more.

His gaze is bright and steady, even in the near darkness. The gun is solid and warm and small enough to fit in the palm of her hand and for some reason, she doesn't want to put it down.

"Open, your mouth for me," is all she has to say, and he follows her instructions as if they came from Byer himself.

_"You'll have to take off your shirt--there have been a few gaps in your sample deliveries so we'll need to do a full spec workup."_

Out of all of them, Outcome-5 always gave her the least trouble.

The barrel slides easily into his mouth. Marta is a little disappointed in how short it is; it doesn't even reach the back of his throat. Still, he makes a small gagging noise and there's a corresponding rush of heat between Marta's legs. Maybe he's never done this before. Or maybe he has, and he's just out of practice. Maybe it happened one night in the desert-cold of Iraq after a little too much contraband hooch. Maybe it was Byer. Maybe it was nobody and Marta should stop making things up.

His chest rises and falls rapidly as he struggles to pull in enough air through his nose. Marta cradles his head against her chest, runs her fingers through his sweat-damp hair, feeds him the dark hard metal until his lips are stretched all the way around the trigger guard and his eyes are watering. 

A shiny mess of spit covers his chin. His eyes look a little unfocused, like he's looking through instead of at her. Aaron's fingers bite down on her thighs tight enough to hurt, but she holds her tongue. His erection presses against her, and her stomach is already sticky from where the head is peeking out of the waistband of his underwear, swollen and dark. He lets go of her so he can try and get a hand around himself, but at the last second Marta stops him.

 _Really_? he says, his raised eyebrows doing all the talking.

"Try for me." He whimpers a little when she runs her teeth along his ear. In response, she spreads her legs wide enough that his cock is pressed right up between them. "Please?"

Aaron Cross and Marta shearing are quite similar, really. The only difference is that the bruises he leaves behind are the kind you can see.

His arms clamp around her like a vice, and he squeezes his eyes shut as his orgasm rattles down his spine. Marta pulls the gun from his mouth and he starts sucking in air in great gasping breaths. She gentles him through it, rubbing his shoulders and placing tiny kisses on his eyes, his nose, and the barely-visible mole on his left shoulder. This is her favorite part. It's the only time when he stops thinking about what they'll do or where they'll go next, and just lets her take care of him.

 

%%%

"My lip is bleeding," is the first thing says afterward, slightly incredulous. He wrests the pistol from Marta's loose grip and stares at it before tossing it toward the foot of the bed. "Fuck."

If Marta squints she can see it, the bright red trickle that sits right where the gun sight would have hit. He makes no move to wipe it away, just lets his head drop against her shoulder and sits quietly for a moment. It's not long before her legs start to cramp. Marta's a little worried about how silent he is, even more so when she's able to push him flat on the mattress with almost no effort at all.

"Hey, you still with me?" She leans down and braces her arms on either side of him.

Aaron blinks rapidly, like he's shaking off a mental fog, then pulls her down to his level so that he can kiss her, wet and sloppy with a lot of enthusiastic tongue.

"You didn't get your own party," he remarks, once they pause to catch a breather. Aaron reaches up and drags a knuckle across the crotch of her panties, which are soaked all the way through. He blinks at her sleepily.

"It can wait, " Marta replies, and rolls off of him. He follows her lead and pins her body to the mattress with one broad arm. His head rests on her stomach as he stares blankly at the calendar nailed to the wall.

After a while, he scrubs a hand across his face and sighs. "Okay, I don't know if--I might not be able to do that again for a while. It was--I was a little in over my head, I think." He's careful not to look at her throughout the entirety of his confession.

Marta flushes, guilty. She'd already been thinking about the next time, maybe with that big revolver he hid behind their giant bag of rice. But she keeps her mouth shut and ruffles his hair.

"Thank you," she says, mostly because she doesn't know what else _to_ say.

He starts to downshift from his emotional high and goes loose-limbed and heavy against her, tracing circles around her hipbone. At one point he gets up, kicks off his underwear and tosses them on the floor before curling up against her side again, his legs tangled in her own.

"You need anything?" Marta asks. "We have water or water on tap tonight."

Aaron plants a kiss right on her bellybutton and gives her half a smile that warms Marta from the inside out. "Nah, this is fine. This right here is good."

Right before each agent would leave her office, Marta would always have to squash the urge to make small talk. Ask them how they were doing, if they'd been anywhere interesting lately. Everyone at Sterisyn-Morlanta was under strict orders to stick to business only. Outcome agents were experiments, not people. She wasn't supposed to call them anything at all.

Maybe, Marta reasons, this was part of his training. It would have been easy enough to wind up someone as alone as Kenneth Kitsom had been. They probably tried to make it so he'd do anything they asked so long as it came with a pat on the back and a 'job well done' at the end. Marta thinks they should write them and tell them they didn't succeed.

It only takes a few minutes before he drops off into the deep sleep characteristic of those who get little of it. He tends to mumble in his sleep, talking about people and places Marta doesn't recognize. She itches to write some of it down, but holds herself back. It's time he was allowed to have some secrets of his own.

Marta has been sleeping as often as not these days, so for a while she just watches him, or looks out the window into the inky darkness. The low temperature will barely crack ninety tonight; so she's not surprised when he rolls over after a while to escape the impressive amount of heat they're generating.

A small beetle crawls around on the pillow next to his face. Marta pinches it dead between her fingers and makes a face before tossing its remains to the floor. If only her sister could see her now. Maybe one day Aaron will let up on some of his rules and Marta will be able to give her a call. She leans down and presses a quick kiss to his forehead. His eyes snap open immediately.

"All clear?" he mumbles.

"Yep. Go back to sleep." Aaron scratches his stomach and does as she says, dropping right back over the edge into unconsciousness.

Marta sits up and rolls out of bed. A few seconds of hunting in the sheets reveals the gun, but she has to spend a while fumbling around on her hands and knees until she locates each of the stray bullets. She sets them all down on the little kitchen table as quietly as she can, then goes for one of the jugs of water they keep in the little nook that serves as a kitchen. It's tepid and tastes of stale plastic, but it's better than nothing.

There is just enough moonlight at this point for her to work by, which is good. She doesn't remember where they put the matches the last time the electricity went out. The first few bullets drop in the clip easily, but it gets progressively harder as the spring winds tighter and tighter. The first few times she tried this, Aaron got tired of waiting and would take the gun from her, pressing each one down in quick succession. When he was finished, he'd kiss the little wrinkle that appeared between her eyebrows whenever she was annoyed about something.

When there's just one left, Marta stops and flexes her tired, cramped fingers.

The last one is always the hardest.


End file.
